Fixing a Broken Company Culture
For the first time in history, Millennials make up the largest portion of the US labor force. Unlike their parents and grandparents, what they are looking for in a workplace is not job security or simply a nice, fat paycheck. We’ve all seen the 80’s and 90’s movies that showed coke-fueled workplaces raking in the cash – and so have Millennials. In fact, that’s what they grew up watching. Which may go a long way towards explaining why they are looking for something more. A “great company culture” no longer means ping-pong tables in the break room and fridges full of beers. Millennials want to know what your company stands for and the kind of impact you are making in the world. Consider these statistics:
- 85% of employees who switched from for-profit organizations to non-profits said they planned to remain in the nonprofit sector for the rest of their careers
- 93% of non-profit employees say they feel engaged at work, which is three times the national average.
- 75% of executives believe that in the next decade, in order to recruit and retain talent, compensation alone will not be enough.
In order to retain top talent, businesses are going to have to do far more than just earn a lot of money or create a “fun” environment. They are going to have to actually embrace and adhere to solid corporate values. Faking it is not enough. Here are 5 signs of a fake corporate culture and how to fix it.
Fake Company Culture – Values Are Just Empty Words
If there’s anything worse than a company with a terrible corporate culture it’s a hypocritical one. If you claim to embrace diversity, yet a photo of your C-Suite and Board of Directors looks like a Swedish patriarchal convention, you don’t really value diversity, you just like the way it sounds. If you claim to care about your employees but constantly find loopholes to keep from having to pay them overtime, you don’t really care about your employees. Whatever you claim your values to be, if you aren’t actually living up to them, you should not be surprised when your best employees just vanish without warning.
High Employee Turnover
Consider these two statistics: 53% of employees say they don’t expect to stay with their company beyond 5 years and yet 56% of millennials still believe that an individual should stay at a single company for more than 20 years. In fact, close to 90% of millennials are looking to grow their careers within their current companies. So where is the disconnect?
Millennials clearly believe that company loyalty is important, yet many don’t see themselves staying with their current company longer than 5 years. The most obvious answer is that businesses are not actually giving them what they are most looking for. And what are they looking for? 86% of Millennials say they would stay with their current job if they offered career training and development. It’s not enough to just say you care about your employees if you aren’t actually investing in them.
Office Gossip
Office gossip may seem like a harmless way to pass a few minutes, but in truth it can be utterly destructive to positive office culture. If gossip runs rampant in your office, you might want to start looking at how your managers and execs talk about employees or about each other. When someone makes a mistake, do you publicly take them to task in front of everyone or do you graciously cover for them publicly and deal with them privately? As childish as it may seem, some childhood lessons may need to be applied at the office: if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
Managers Don’t Lead by Example
Leadership is not a “do as I say, not as I do” proposition. No matter what kind of example you set, you can absolutely trust your employees to follow your lead. If you or your managers or executives regularly come in late and leave early, you can expect your employees to do the same thing. If you cut corners, lie to customers or steal from the company in any way, you can absolutely expect your employees to do the same thing or to lose the ones that don’t or won’t. If there are cultural issues within your company, it’s almost never your employees that you need to look at to find the cause.
Too Much Competition Between Your Employees
When it comes to increasing performance, a little competition never hurt anyone. But it can easily get out of hand if it is not managed and handled appropriately. Competition inherently creates a divide between “winners” and “losers,” with winners often seeking to make that divide as firm as possible.
Managing and handling competition well doesn’t mean giving everyone a participation trophy at the end, but it also doesn’t mean only rewarding the winners. You can still honor employees who put in a good effort or the team that made the most progress, even if they weren’t the winner. One great way to ensure competition doesn’t get out of hand is to provide plenty of social events that are not competition based. For instance, after a big inter-office competition, you can host a barbecue or other event to show everyone a good time no matter how well or how poorly they did.
Nike may be the most glaring example in the 21st century of the importance of corporate culture and the effect it can have on the corporate bottom line. As women’s fitness apparel was blooming and blossoming into a multi-billion dollar a year industry, one of the biggest names in the fitness apparel world couldn’t seem to gain traction and no one could understand why. That is until early 2018, when a corporate shakeup revealed a long-standing pattern of overt sexism within the corporate walls. Creating strong corporate culture is not just about keeping your employees happy. It’s about creating a strong and enduring bottom line that won’t be rocked by scandal when the difference between what you say and what you do is revealed to the public.